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So is this a cutscene character or is he going to die again and again in the game?
Shit, that would make a pretty cool Philip K. Dick style story. Dude dies but is reincarnated in a video game and is abused by the player. All You Need Is Kill, ancient Rome version.

I also really liked what Gearbox did with Borderlands 2. A pretty popular forum-user/fan of the series died, so they made him a character in the game (the guy who you run into who gives you a free gun of good quality). Especially nice because he is a "Vault Hunter" which is essentially code for "King of the badasses" in Borderlands-speak.

Yeah, I liked that too, especially as he also got an achievement (Tribute To A Vault Hunter - Got an item from Michael Mamaril) and it got players discussing the best ways to find him and so on. The first time I found him and he said something like 'see you out in the field' or something, it got me thinking that his friends would probably have heard the same thing (ok, so it's not his voice (I think he'd passed away before Gearbox even knew about him)) and gotten all emotional over it. Maybe.

In short, the tribute was really well done in many ways. It's a shame he doesn't pop up more frequently and isn't a little more obvious when he is around, but still, it just makes it that little bit more exciting to see him.

Offhand I can think of two other examples of fans appearing in an official video game. One guy had his face scanned and put on an NPC in the Onderon cantina in Knights of the Old Republic 2. And Norris from System Shock 2 is based on real-life fan Brian Norris. He even got to voice his own audio logs. I believe both of them were featured in their respective games because they won a contest.

Of course with the success of recent Kickstarter projects, having fans make a cameo appereance might become a more common occurence in the future.

Ashes of Lord Brinne, located in Samarys Ancestral Tomb. There is also the Mentor's Ring in this urn. Lord Brinne was the online name of Bill Iburg, an Elder Scrolls fan who died unexpectedly during the development of Morrowind. The urn, and his ashes, were placed in the game as a tribute. Lord Brinne also received similar tributes in other games that were in development at the time: Might and Magic VIII, Deus Ex and Ultima IX: Ascension.

The in-game reference is nice, but what I think is most important is the day this young man got to spend at Creative Assembly and the much appreciated respite this must have given him from his daily worries. What a great initiative by the Willow Foundation!

That's what I was thinking. Adding a memorial to a game, ie just a named tomb/plaque, doesn't really take that much effort. But they took time out to spent time with the guy it seems like, which is the nice part.

I think people here need to remember that you can't choose your family but you can choose the people who've been nice enough to say that they enjoyed what you created - instead of just pirating it and then swearing about it as if you were entitled to an opinion anyway...

I'd actually like to see developers putting people who abuse their work into their games as combat practice dummies or people hanging in dungeons or in strapped into beds hospitals - auto-tweeting pleas for mercy to their hacked Twitter accounts when you find them - posting their death status to Facebook when you kill them etc etc - that would be cool :)

Moving away from the gratuitous (but serendipitous and just) violence if I may - as someone said, there are a few memorials in WoW and the best bit about them is that when you find them, you'll do a bit of research to see what they're about and that's just more reasons to explore the GREATEST GAMEWORLD EVER MADE - yes, really, THAT.

I remember spending ages wondering what the 'hard to climb into' rock near Crossroads was - there's the Hunter on the platform in Shattrath as well and so on - all good in my eyes - oh I need to go back there again...

At least 1+ graves with passed away developers, tho the focus of the thread is Fans being put into games.

Nowadays you can pay via Kickstarter to get yourself or a character you designed into the game. Seems to be a common high tier reward for many Kickstarters. Best part of these make a wish as some of mentioned is being able to visit the developers of a game you enjoy a lot and get a in house look how it happens. In game reference/character is icing.

My point is that it is just as stupid. You can either explain how it's not stupid in either case or make an argument for why it's not stupid in games, unless you just want to keep screaming the same line in lieu of making a point, which, I suppose, would not be out of place on here.